Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday August 13, 2014 @05:19PM
from the casting-wider-nets-through-technology dept.

mrspoonsi sends this BBC report:
"A U.S. juggler facing child sex abuse charges, who jumped bail 14 years ago, has been arrested in Nepal after the use of facial-recognition technology. Street performer Neil Stammer traveled to Nepal eight years ago using a fake passport under the name Kevin Hodges. New facial-recognition software matched his passport picture with a wanted poster the FBI released in January. Mr Stammer, who had owned a magic shop in New Mexico, has now been returned to the U.S. state to face trial. The Diplomatic Security Service, which protects U.S. embassies and checks the validity of U.S. visas and passports, had been using FBI wanted posters to test the facial-recognition software, designed to uncover passport fraud. The FBI has been developing its own facial-recognition database as part of the bureau's Next Generation Identification program."

There are a limited number of police officers, and they are human beings so at least in theory can't easily be ordered to break the law or do unethical things. An automated face recognition system can be cheaply deployed almost everywhere, and can be used for nefarious purposes simply by adding the faces of a few people the authorities don't like to the list of suspects. "Sorry, false positive" is going to become a new way to harass innocent people that those with authority don't like.

The system will also be abused for data collection, if it isn't already. Used to be that they only had a record of people actually going through the border checkpoints, but now they can just sprinkle cameras around the general area and see who accompanied them. Cops can't identify everyone they see, but a computer can. Even if it doesn't have a name, it can create a record and spot when the same person visits another place with facial recognition. The NSA already scans the internet for public photos to build a database of known faces.

If you enable perfect surveillance, then the result - "police without blindfolds", as well as employers, potential employers, competitors, secret national police, secret and not-secret corporate police (ever wonder about how Apple's security forces seem to have worldwide power and mobility?), marketers, your neighbors, your family, friends, enemies, and Scientology's and Moonies' covert operations getting their "blindfolds" removed - will be a world where everyone is a criminal, and the only recourse you ha

I know of several people who were dismissed as tinfoil hatters prior to the Snowden revelations.

I strongly suspect that those people can still be safely dismissed as tinfoil hat wearers. When you spit out a hundred different conspiracy theories every day, one of them is bound to be right eventually. That's the magic of probability and large numbers.

But, there were many who read Orwell and were convinced government would eventually devolve to this.

Yeah; the dumb kids sitting at the back of the class eating their crayons, who didn't realize Orwell was referring to communist regimes which already existed at the time. In other words, the same idiots who make up the majority of the various Conspiracy Theory movements today.

People are listening to all our internet traffic - Cisco router back doors
All our online searches and emails are filtered for "illegal content" - Google turns over suspicious emails to government officials
Our cell phones record all our conversations - all cell companies have huge data stores of every phone call made for at least the last decade
Toll cameras track our movements by license plate - Shown to be true via the state of new york
Our cell phones are used to track our location - Federal government has put out several notices to local law enforcement to deny such claims
Facebook turns over all personal data to law enforcement - These reports are just scarily detailed
Our cars monitor our movements - onstar
The government is building a huge database of potential troublemakers, "terrorists," and including all their friends and relatives on that same list by association - NSA
Facial recognition is monitoring our every movement through controlled areas - see this article

After 2015 or so, Federal law will require integrated tracking devices and radio network integration into all cars. They tried passing that law last year, and backed down - but they will slip it back in when no one is looking. I imagine motorcycles, Elios, and anything that moves will be included, excepting bicycles... and don't bet they won't get around to bikes.As I said a decade ago here: open-air prison. The point to power is power. No reason is necessary; people who want power over other people will gr

Most of the ones who were dismissed as such probably still are. Usually those types of people listen to Alex Jones. And you know what? They're still equally nutty and in some cases downright silly. Examples of such silliness: They believe IPv6 is a Cisco plot in tandem with the Illuminati and/or the NWO to take over the world. Yeah you read that right; and you can't make this shit up:

As I said in an earlier post, I like how hardcore and bold the NWO is. A teeny fraction of the world's internet users use IPv6, and Cisco and the other globalist cyber false-flagger corporations believe all of the world's sheeple will just ease into the new global cattle pen with no resistance.

Also, remember that this is an arms race. A few more similar cases and press coverage, and those people you target will know that a false identity only works if it comes with plastic surgery. And: whatever benefits they say face recognition has, they are dwarfed by the potential abuses. But we don't talk about those, we're busy thinking of the children, while trying not to think too hard of the children, because that would put us in a different camp.

What we really need - but will never have - is some sort of independent civilian oversight group designed to make sure these sorts of programs operate within some specific narrow parameters - with effective enforcement power.

Looking for passport fraud? Go ahead and look through all the passport pictures... as long as you immediately discard every single one that doesn't match.

Looking for a stolen car? Go ahead and use that vehicle-mounted license plate scanner... But you can't store any of the non-matching plates for even a second.

By this, I assume you mean have a human police officer use biological eyes to scan streets and parking lots for a stolen car or it's license plate number. This is a very expensive and inefficient way to solve the problem.

There are a lot of problems that are best solved by government entities. Like any business, the government should strive to solve these problems as efficiently as possible. The issue is that a lot of the process or technological improvements that we can put in place (like license plate s

Yes. That is the point. All of this automated surveillance has gotten out of control, and allows the government to oppress people more efficiently than ever before. That is not a good thing; sometimes the government should not be inexpensive or effective.

The oversight never does any good, will be subverted eventually, and doesn't solve the fundamental problem: The data on innocents should not be collected to begin with.

It's an API for a future tyranny that we will be helpless against. Tomorrow is not today. Those in charge will not be the pussycats we have now; such power will attrack tyrants and secret governments. No, guarantees them.Do not give the monkeys the key to the banana plantation.

It's an API for a future tyranny that we will be helpless against. Tomorrow is not today. Those in charge will not be the pussycats we have now; such power will attrack tyrants and secret governments

Man, I wish I were psychic:(

I totally get your point though. If only we'd never invented the printing press and the telegraph, we'd be completely tyrant-free by now. These newfangled gadgets are always making the world more dangerous for us. Pretty soon we won't even have lawns for yelling at kids to get off of.

Our government doesn't yet have enough political power to safely brutalize its general population (though it's doing an increasingly good job on minorities), but it can control most of us never-the-less.

Your government doesn't need to brutalize its general population in order to control it.And, as you have noted yourself, it does resort to brutalizing when dealing with less compliant groups.

Our government doesn't yet have enough political power to safely brutalize its general population (though it's doing an increasingly good job on minorities)

That's hilarious. You're talking about the country which built concentration camps for Japanese citizens, had an official policy of enslaving and then later segregating blacks, and treated the Jews and the Irish as second-class citizens for centuries. That's the country which you think is "doing an increasingly good job on [brutalizing] minorities".

You've either never picked up a history book in your life, or you care more about politics and ideology than you do about reality.

Kinda funny, then, that bankrupt regimes with 1980s era electronics are orders of magnitude better at this "oppression" thing than our own high-tech governments.

The US government has it's citizens barely able to control their bowels due to unfounded fear of terrorism. Dissidents are corralled into "free speech zones" or simply ignored. Everyone is being watched - what they do online, where they go (phone tracking), who they communicate with. The government actively monitors and attempts to disrupt dissent online via operations against sites such as Slashdot. What little protection US citizens have in law is easily bypassed by having foreign partners such as GCHQ operate against them on the NSA's behalf. There are secret courts designed to prevent proper oversight and scrutiny.

There is little difference between the two main parties, and the people with the real power don't change even when they do. Americans have very little real democratic influence.

The US has outdone all those oppressive regimes and most of its citizens don't even realize what has happened. Rather than an unstable, overtly violent system of control the US has found a way to almost completely subdue the population without the risk of being overthrown.

The US government has it's citizens barely able to control their bowels due to unfounded fear of terrorism.

Complete fucking nonsense. The average American is more afraid of vaccines than they are of terrorists.

Dissidents are corralled into "free speech zones" or simply ignored.

Only in the mind of a delusional sociopath is being ignored the same as being oppressed. And what kind of egomaniac do you have to be in order to believe that you have a right to other peoples attention?

The government actively monitors and attempts to disrupt dissent online via operations against sites such as Slashdot.

Also, your tinfoil hat seems to be leaking.

There are secret courts designed to prevent proper oversight and scrutiny.

So secret that you and your cat were able to find loads of evidence which you would happily share with others if only the MIBs hadn't stolen it from you!

There is little difference between the two main parties, and the people with the real power don't change even when they do. Americans have very little real democratic influence.

I think using this technology in this context is a net negative as it's eventually going to be used against activists, whistle blowers and other individuals that are insufficiently patriotic, not to mention the potential for abuse and hacking.

In this day and age, you almost have to have a driver's license. How is it fair that they make you get one, and then they use privacy-violating facial recognition software on it? They shouldn't be allowed to use this information as they please. They should need a specific warrant to even look at it, and I don't think all these government organizations should be sharing information. Freedom and privacy are simply more important than safety.

doesn't disgust me.

Because you're anti-freedom. Enjoy the fruits of your labor, the very same fruits that have grown time and time again throughout history.

Indeed. And now they are ready to break it to the public and have searched for a nice, repulsive individual for a few months, ignoring countless others where the public might have noticed how bad the technology actually is for individual freedom.

This is what I immediately thought. They're looking to take it into the limelight and actually use it publicly, as opposed to using it and hiding the fact through "Parallel Construction" [wikipedia.org].

The idea of a police-state is that you cannot hide. Sure, for really bad crimes, it is fine for the state to throw a lot of resources at it, bit what they did here is cheap and can be applied universally. That the index case seems to be somebody carefully selected so that nobody has any sympathy is just a propaganda trick. I bet they had at the very least several hundred hits.

And if you think a police-state is not so bad, after all it just mercilessly enforces the rule of law, here is news for you: 1. "The law" and morality, ethics and what is right are two different things. For example, the killing of the Jews in the 3rd Reich was legal. 2. A police state is universally followed by totalitarianism, because at some point all opposition can be silenced legally.

Crimes against Jews -- especially those committed by officials of the state -- were ignored by people who were responsible for enforcing the laws in Nazi Germany but at no point did the Nazis change the criminal code to say: "by the way, you totally can kill all the Jews you want".

Read Three Felonies a Day (http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx), then apply this type of technology.

That has been totally debunked. The author claims that the average person commits three felonies on an average day. The examples that he gives are things that very few people do once in their life. So iff you are in the USA, you are not going to commit three felonies today. There is a small chance that you commit _one_ at some point in your life, but that chance is small.

Forgive the troll feeding, if that's the case. Snowden was convicted of what?

The same thing this guy who is being extradited from Nepal was. Nothing yet. He jumped bail, which can only happen prior to trial.

What I'm wondering about in this story, if the passport was FAKE, how did the FBI have a copy of the passport PHOTO that wasn't sent to the department of state to scan against the mug shot they did have? Was the passport REAL but under an assumed name, or was it really fake and not issued by the state department and they got the picture by magic?

"how did the FBI have a copy of the passport PHOTO that wasn't sent to the department of state"

If you could be bothered to read the article, you would know that they didn't.

The State Department had the passport photos. The FBI makes the photos of wanted criminals widely available. The person at the State department looking for fraud ran the recognition software on those two sets of pictures and found a match between pictures with different identities attached. The FBI before this point did NOT have the pass

If you could be bothered to read the article, you would know that they didn't. The State Department had the passport photos.

And had you read my question, you'd have noticed that who had the photos was pretty much irrelevant, the important question was HOW DID THEY GET IT? The passport was fake. You don't send your photo to the state department to get a fake passport, you give it to the guy making the fake passports. He doesn't send them to the state department, either.

The FBI before this point did NOT have the passport photo, and at this point they got it from the State Department.

So now you say the FBI did have the photo because the state department gave it to them, after telling me they didn't have it. I don't really care who had it, the

"You don't send your photo to the state department to get a fake passport,"

The word fake is not in the article.

"So now you say the FBI did have the photo because the state department gave it to them, after telling me they didn't have it."Yes, because at the time the scanning was done the FBI in fact did not have the photo. After the State department found the match against the publicly available wanted criminal information the passport information becomes evidence of an alias used by a criminal and thus is

Street performer Neil Stammer travelled to Nepal eight years ago using a fake passport under the name Kevin Hodges.

Yes, because at the time the scanning was done the FBI in fact did not have the photo. After the State department found the match against the publicly available wanted criminal information

It doesn't matter WHO had the picture. State department, FBI, whatever. Since the passport was fake, and clearly said so in the article as well as the summary, the state department wouldn't have the picture. You do not send your picture to the state department when you get a fake passport, you give it to the guy who makes the fakes. And he doesn

Because it's not fake as in "printed at home to look like a passport" (or something slightly more likely to work). It's fake as in "not actually for the person it claims to be". "Fake" is the wrong word of course, which is probably why the article doesn't use that word but uses "fraud".

So not being a complete moron the guy didn't get a passport in his own name. But instead got one in someone else's name - using his own photo since it helps to look like the photo when actually using the passport.

Straw man. Nobody said it was. It's "fake" as in "not a real passport". "Not real passports" are created by "not the State Department", just like "not a real Chevy" is produced by "not Chevrolet". Nothing in "fake passport" means "printed on your printer at home."

It's fake as in "not actually for the person it claims to be".

That's not "fake", that's "false" or "fraudulent." If the state department issues it using the standard process, it isn't a fake. The information on it is fraudulent. If Boeing ships a 737 off the assembly line that contains counterfeit parts fr

Repurposing of data for unrelated uses is deeply corrosive to the trust that society needs to function. It keeps us all metaphorically looking over our shoulders, wondering in the back of our heads just how this information generated by going about our normal every-day lives might end up harming us. Even if one in a million times it helps catch a pedo, that still doesn't justify the damage it does to a free society.

There will always be crime, even in the most authoritarian of countries. But copious amounts of dignity and privacy are necessary for a healthy society - when you constantly have to second guess yourself it makes you less willing to be open and honest with others, makes you less willing to take risks, to be unconventional. Just compare the amount of creative development in the west to that of the USSR in the same time frame, or even North Korea now. Every time a database is repurposed, our society gets a little bit less robust.

The only valid reason for a passport photo is to make sure that one person doesn't have two passports.

That, and to make sure the passport is really the person who claims it is his.

OK, I will grant you this: You can dispense with the photo altogether for "yes, this passport is mine" purposes if there is another practically-un-spoofable method for the purported passport holder to prove that it is his. A hash of DNA/fingerprint/iris/etc. will do. Possession of knowledge, such as a decryption key of encyphered text embedded in the passport that says "yes, it's really me" will be good enough for most purposes

> That, and to make sure the passport is really the person who claims it is his.> You can dispense with the photo altogether for "yes, this passport is mine" purposes if there is another practically-un-spoofable

For over a century we've had passports without such unspoofable methods and without significant problems. Just because the technology is now there to cross-check photos does not mean we must do it. Do not fall victim to the authoritarianism of technocracy.

> For over a century we've had passports without such unspoofable methods and without significant problems.

I'd call for a citation, but based on that incredibly broad statement and all the passport games that have been played over said century and change by spies, criminals, freedom fighters, terrorists, martyrs and evildoers...not to mention others, I think I'm just going to call shenanigans.
Or BS, if you prefer.

Possession of knowledge, such as a decryption key of encyphered text embedded in the passport that says "yes, it's really me" will be good enough for most purposes but it's not as good as a unique biometric identifier.

Knowledge of a decryption key would be useless to prevent passport fraud. I could loan my passport to someone and tell him the key -- then he's me. He would have a lot harder time developing my same facial features to defeat a picture, especially if "he" is a "she" trying to impersonate me. The IMF could do perfect impersonations, but for normal folk not so much. "The password is..." could be used by anyone.

One of the prerequisites of having a passport is not having an outstanding warrant.

I am not a criminal, owning a passport should not be cause to consider me a potential criminal.

Sorry but everyone on earth is a potential criminal. I don't care how many times my finger prints (they were taken for a background check) are compared because I have never committed a serious crime (I have a few speeding tickets).

The only valid reason for a passport photo is to make sure that one person doesn't have two passports.

It is also a valid use to match the person with the passport and therefore the name and other information on the passport. What is the difference between doing a text search on the name on a passpor

Sorry but everyone on earth is a potential criminal. I don't care how many times my finger prints (they were taken for a background check) are compared because I have never committed a serious crime (I have a few speeding tickets).

Agreed. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. History confirms this.

By that standard police should never use radar guns as that is checking the speed on an "innocent" driver. Using every possible database to find a criminal is a valid use of data and not an invasion. He gave the information to the government as a picture for a passport. That they found him using that data is valid. There is no freedom to be anonymous.

http://america.aljazeera.com/o... [aljazeera.com]
Snippet: Despite finding that Mayfield’s print was not an identical match to the print left on the bag of detonators, FBI fingerprint examiners rationalized away the differences, according to a report by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Under the one discrepancy rule, the FBI lab should have concluded Mayfield did not leave the print found in Madrid — a conclusion the SNP reached and repeatedly communicated to the FBI. Th

No, it isn't valid. Not if it's easily subject corruption like this is, and not if that's not what they said they'd do with the data.

Every tool of law enforcement is subject to corruption. By that standard police officers should not have batons because they can and have been used to beat innocent people. What needs to be done is the penalties for corruption need to be high enough to deter the corruption. In most cases they are.

You're being very disturbing by saying that any information the government has can be used for absolutely anything,

Don't put words in my mouth. In this case the person gave identification information to the government and the government used that information to identify him. It is not even a change of use.

Scanning travel documents for hits in criminal (or other databases) is yet another case of data being re-purposed for uses other than the original intent.

Your passport is proof of your identity, citizenship and right to travel outside your own borders. It has always been subject to verification through whatever means are available.

In its beginnings, a passport was a formal letter of introduction to your hosts and in the strongest possible language spoke of the legitimacy of your mission, your good faith and common sense. To be signed by someone highly placed and credible.

Note that the FBI is not scanning the set of passport photos for hits in a criminal database. In fact, in this case the FBI is not doing any scanning at all.

In this case, the State Department was scanning passport photos for hits in publicly available identity information, since passports are identity information and are expected to correctly match your identity. It just so happens that the State Department found a hit against a differen identity that was also that of a wanted criminal and that the identiti

The government already owns the database of passport photos. It's theirs. Every person who has a photo in there gave it to the government. In this case the FBI did a cross reference between 2 databases owned by the government. They did not force or coerce any private entity or individual to divulge private information to them. They weren't using any sort of real time or recent time surveillance. I don't see how you can make any rational suggestion to stop this situation short of abolishing passport photos and the subsequent database of them.

You may not like it. You may think this is another step on the slippery slope, but what specific part of this do you recommend be changed?

Should the government not be allowed to look at their own data? Do you think government agencies should not be able to share data? Do you think passports should not require photos? If you can come up with a way to stop this you can work on changing things. Otherwise, you're just whining about things.

Don't be such a tight-ass. I suppose we shouldn't make any jokes about death, divorce, marriage, or any of the other things that happen in life because there are real people that really suffered from it.

While you have a point, it is probably a good thing that we all have different viewpoints and opinions. Imagine how boring a society we'd have if we were all identical. Do you also consider 9/11 jokes to be so bad as to be unutterable? Do you consider every joke to be unutterable?

I actually have the same point of view as to racial jokes and use of the n-word. I consider use of that word to be a sign of that person's character and in poor taste. Perhaps this is because the child abuse is a largely for

If they trot out the child abusers (usually carefully selected so that nobody has any sympathy), what is actually announced is really bad for individual freedoms. Expect this to be used against you on a traffic ticket in 5-10 years or to identify people participating in lawful demonstrations. That is a sure way to a police-state and that one is universally followed by totalitarianism some time later.

What's the difference with a criminal walking in public and being identified by some person who notifies the authorities VS. a criminal walking in public and being identified by a camera using face recognition software which notifies the authorities?

There are no cameras in our homes watching us. There are no cameras in the bathroom watching us. No cameras where there's a reasonable expectation of privacy...

I just don't get the argument that a camera scanning my face in public is the "gover

No spells, I don't think. What we refer to as "magic" here in the US is simply sleight-of-hand. I've never visited a "magic shop", but I would expect to find top hats with secret compartments, costumes, literal smoke and mirrors, special decks of cards, loaded dice, the boxes and saws used to "saw people in half". There would probably be books detailing how to make these tricks work. Such books would emphasize the importance of distracting the audience' attention away from the trickery, toward something